Baby Shoes
by distrahere
Summary: Haunted by memories of what could have been and what definitely never was.


**Sorry I only write sad stories.**

_Two pale white hands, reaching towards her. A gurgle. A small smile forming on two perfect lips. The intoxicating smell pulled Jac closer. But no matter how much she tried, she could never reach those tiny, inviting hands. And she could never look into her eyes._

Jac Naylor closed her eyes, looked towards the sky and breathed in slowly. She opened her eyes slowly, hoping to see anything other that the bright blue sky. She couldn't face another morning. But the sun was shining. Not that made any difference. Every morning was the same. She would get up. Get dressed. Her wardrobe was full of neutral colours so she didn't even need to look at what she was putting on. Her motorcycle helmet and leathers were waiting by the door where she had dropped them last night. If there was food in her cupboard, which there never was, then she might stop for breakfast. Or coffee. Her house was empty. Someone had once said that it was empty of memories, emotion and happiness too. But that was never true until now. Once she had hoped for change. Once she had believed- she didn't like to think about it. Every morning she stepped outside her front door and breathed, hoping that it would somehow prepare her for the marathon ahead of her. It never did.

She would speed on her bike. Just like the old days, risk taking because she had no reason to stay safe. And then someone had come along to persuade her otherwise. But he had left. People always did. She more than deserved it. Ironically that had been her first chance at being a mother. But she loved her job more than she could dare to love anything else. It was all she had, all she was, all she could be. Or that was what she thought. But a second person entered her life, in a way that she would have never expected. He was everything she never would have asked for, but all that she needed. She had screwed that up, of course, screwed him over. That was all she ever known how to do. But then something came along, something so surprising, so unexpected that it had taken her breathe away. She remembered something everyone else had assumed that she had forgotten, or never learnt how to do. Smile. She was going to be a mother. Everything was going to change. In that one moment, every single one of her priorities altered or flew away completely. Suddenly her job meant nothing. She believed for the first time in her life, that everything might be okay.

She didn't like to think of the ending of that part of the the story, but it was never far from her mind. She had made sure that there was no evidence of it anywhere, but still the memories flooded in, whenever she let her guard down. The physical pain of the birth experience had been eclipsed by mental anguish only less than an hour after her little girl had come into the world. A single cry. And then nothing. Silence that spoke louder than words.

And there were many words that people tried to offer in a misplaced attempt to show that they understood. A support worker had tried to tell her that the reason that her baby hadn't lived longer than a few seconds, was because she was already too perfect for this world. She had paused no longer than the 30 seconds it had required to explain that her daughter had died due to complications resulting from a birth defect known as a diaphragmatic hernia, before leaving and never going back. Elliot had lost his wife, and that somehow equated to an understanding that qualified him to tell her that one day it would all make sense. Mo, who had to give up the baby boy she carried for nine months only hours after the birth, tried to her offer support too. Jac wouldn't take it. And Jonny. Jonny Maconie. He of all people should have known that leaving her alone to cope with the grief would be best thing to do. But he tried to empathise, he tried to care. Jac soon put a stop to that. Alone was best. Alone was what suited her. It was better for everyone.

Jac knew what her daughter looked like. Would have looked like. She saw her everywhere. On street corners, at the end of a supermarket isle, in the reflection of a kidney dish, across theatre. Some people would call it being haunted, but Jac preferred to think of it as a recurring memory of what should have been. Nobody knew anyway, Jac had always been good at pretending. The pain inside was well hidden under an impermeable layer of ice cold sarcasm. She had thrown herself into her work, more so than she had ever done before. It had paid off, and she was one of the most eminent CT surgeons in Britain. But she felt no success from the achievement, because she always wanted something more. Something unachievable inside the four walls of an operating theatre. She would have risked everything just to feel that feeling again.

She got to the cemetery at 8:32. She was late, traffic had been unusually slow. But that wasn't an excuse. She parked her bike in it's usual spot. The place was empty, but that was the way that she liked it. There was a coldness in the air, she appreciated that too. It seemed appropriate. She knew her way around the cemetery as well as she knew her way around the human heart. The endless rows of graves, each one signifying unequal measures of memory and loss, were as familiar to her as the procedure for removing a heart for transplant. Sometimes she wished that there was a way to remove her own, replace it with a machine or just nothing. She knew that people used to joke that she had none. No one would say that now. She reached the gravestone in just under a minute, caressing the curve of the cold marble, willing herself to be able to cry. She read the words, not that she didn't know them off by heart. _In loving memory of Rosemary Catherine Naylor. 18/04/2014 _The engraving was simple, Jac didn't want some clichéd epitaph that would mean nothing in the future. All that could have been and all that definitely never was lay under her feet. Jac paused for a moment, trying to forget yet another time, and then turned and walked away.

_A pair of baby shoes, sat in the middle of an empty desk. _


End file.
